The Democrats could hardly be in worse shape: unpopular with the people, shut out of power in Washington, seemingly bereft of leaders and, worse, of new ideas, facing a president with a record-setting baseline popularity rating of 65 percent. Still, the Dems are going to conduct a spirited primary season (it’s already begun) among what, on paper, has to be considered a formidable range of candidates. They think the 2004 nomination will be worth having, and they may be more correct than we know–depending on the president’s ability to handle the many and growing profound challenges he faces.
First, a word about the Democratic field before I review those challenges. The operating assumption among the insiders is that Al Gore is “in”–even though his comically over-managed re-entry onto the national stage bombed worse than a Madonna movie. It seems that the more the American people saw of him, the more they were reminded of the qualities they didn’t like: a devastating New York Times poll puts his current “favorable” rating at a dismal 19 percent. Still, he is a celebrity victim with a grass-roots following and a cogent line of attack on a host of issues, from the environment to the terror war.
I am told, somewhat to my surprise, that Tom Daschle is going to run. It’s said that his wife, Linda, has dropped her objections to a race and that both have been inspired to combat–or at least inured to it–by the heat of the last year and a half, in which the White House and its Republican allies have tried to demonize the Democratic Senate leader. Daschle left the stage last week complaining that Rush Limbaugh was inciting violence against him–an over-the-top charge, to say the least. But Daschle is a fighter with dogged political skills and the deep admiration of Washington powerbrokers, who genuinely admire him–and who will back his presidential bid if for no other reason than that he remains the minority leader in the Senate.
‘COWBOY’ KERRY
The hot commodity of the moment is Sen. John Kerry, whose “cowboy” reputation in Vietnam–retailed in a recent New Yorker article–now looks like just what the Dems need in an effort to outflank Bush on the war on terror, as long as it is tempered (as it is in Kerry’s case) by nearly 20 years of deep and detailed foreign policy experience in Congress. Some insiders tell me that Sen. John Edwards–positioning himself as a moderate Southern “progressive” (he doesn’t like the label “populist”)–won’t run if Daschle does. I don’t buy it. I think Edwards, as hungry and impatient as any man I’ve seen, is in.
So is the plodding but effective–and underestimated–Dick Gephardt. Sit down with him now and you find a mellower, more thoughtful, more relaxed–and appealing–character than the one who shouted angry, populist imprecations in Iowa 14 years ago. The guy knows what he’s doing, and conveys it. No one thinks Joe Lieberman will run if Gore does. But if the polls numbers are so bad that even Gore can’t ignore them, Lieberman has an impressive organization ready to spring to life in a second. People don’t know whether to laugh at Howard Dean of Vermont of think of him as the next Jimmy Carter: an obscure governor whose sheer expenditure of shoe leather will get him the nomination. He’s a tough cookie, I know from having interviewed him: a skin-flint budget-balancer who nevertheless wants national health insurance for all–yet another Yalie in a race that may be full of them.
OTHER POSSIBILITIES
It’s going to be hard to characterize that crowd, with or without Gore, as dwarfish. There may be other entrants, too, including Sen. Joe Biden, who ran in 1988, who is only 60 (he was a kid when he was first elected) and whose foreign policy expertise (he’s the ranking Dem on the committee) gives him credibility. These are pros, and they aren’t in it for the mere sport of it. What do they see?
They see a president facing enormous challenges and, in their own view, headed off in directions that will bring him, and the country, to the edge of disaster. And it’s true that Bush faces more daunting tasks now, than ever before. Here’s the short list for 2003:
IRAQ – Having spent the last six months explaining why Saddam Hussein must be disarmed and removed from power, the president can’t back down, and it’s widely assumed that he won’t. Which means the war, half-heartedly endorsed by much but hardly all of the U.N., will probably begin late this winter or early in spring. Saddam’s regime may collapse in an instant, or rather quickly, both of which would be political triumphs for the president. But then we would have to run Iraq for the foreseeable future, a task infinitely more difficult and expensive than the not-very-successful “nation-building” exercise in Afghanistan. Protracted custodianship in Iraq poses obvious problems for Bush, in terms of money if nothing else. If Hussein doesn’t collapse, and the war is costly in terms of blood and treasure, then the ongoing war will be the central, indeed, defining, feature of presidential politics. Is Bush going to want to make a “stay the course” argument in such circumstances?
SAUDI ARABIA – The U.S.-Saudi relationship is like a dysfunctional marriage, full of buried anger and uncomfortable, unexamined truths. Relative to other suppliers, we depend on Saudi light sweet crude rather less than we used to, but it’s still by far the most plentiful, easily extracted and transported petroluem in the world. That means we need the Saudis, even as they shovel cash into the fists of hate-filled Muslim extremists everywhere from Indonesia to San Diego. If war comes, will the House of Saud survive? The Pentagon is basing its Gulf operations in Qatar, in the off-chance that Saudi Arabia falls apart. How will the president deal with the economic and energy-sector chaos?
DEBT – The states are broke, the feds can’t lend them enough money, and Alan Greenspan–the soul of anti-inflationary caution–is essentially talking about printing even more money to keep things going (since he’s lowered interest rates practically to zero). The growing costs of a growing global war against terrorism are going to show up, increasingly, on the federal balance sheet. How is Bush going to square those costs with the social spending he says he wants to do and the tax cut he wants to make permanent? The Democatic contenders are betting on the come–that the Republican numbers won’t “pencil.”
GOP CONTROL – Beware of what you wish for. Karl Rove and George Bush wanted it all–total control of Congress. Now they’ve got it (to the extent that the unruly institution can be “controlled” at all). Now the GOP has to produce. Demonizing Daschle may be fun, but it has even less political oomph than before: He doesn’t run things (Trent Lott, Mitch McConnell, Denny Hastert and Tom DeLay do.) The lines of tension in Washington in 2003, by the way, could well be between those four and the White House. They are a conservative crew, and Bush may want to tack a little left for their tastes.
OSAMA BIN LADEN – Bush said early on he wanted him “dead or alive.” He’s apparently alive, and the London Observer recently published a chilling “Letter to the Americans” purportedly written by OBL. It got little or no coverage in the U.S., but it was sobering evidence of the depth of hatred we face in the world, and of the stridency of those who would attack us again on our soil. The biggest political risk the president faces–one he is aware of every waking minute of the day–is another al-Qaeda attack on our soil. We all pray that it will never happen again, but Bush administration officials are frank to acknowledge that the possibility is real. If and when that day comes, Bush would face his toughest political test. It will be in the form of a question: Was there anything you could have done, but didn’t do, to prevent it? His fate would rest on the answer.
